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Failure
to have my application for the coaching job acknowledged last year
got me bitter. I retired in protest. I'm over it now, so I took
a jaunt along to watch the game on Friday. It was shit. Made a few
observations, but.
- The ground
announcer is, as usual, a cock. Every five minutes he spunked
reminders at me of where I was, what day it was, and what I should
do: "Friday night rugby at North Harbour Stadium. Let's make some
noise." Then he played loud music. Lots of this music was more
cliché than a rolling stone gathering no moss at the end of the
day, yeah, nah, basically. Listen, f*ckgob, I know I'm at NH Stadium
- I f*cking drove here. And I know it's Friday night coz I'm more
pissed than I was last night. And you've got a mike and a million
speakers, and are a perfect advert for not making noise, so just
let me watch the rugby (or whatever that shit was they were playing).
- At half
time some guy interviewed the 'leader' of the Hato Petera and
Westlake 'Bucket Men'. These guys are making plenty of noise and
are great. Unfortunately, the interview descended into the usual
shit when a bunch of fans manage to co-ordinate their chanting
in this country: the chanting gets analysed, examined, and strategised
by some corporate lapdog who wants to package it and sell it to
the rest of the crowd so that Mr Big can achieve "maximum atmospheric
potential" for his "gameday package". So listen up, Mr Big: you
can't package that shit, because that shit comes partly from the
heart and partly from culture. Harbour fans are mostly part-timers
or old and middle-class, have been so for about 15 years, and
don't like shouting because their hearts will stop pumping blood
and they will die. We are f*cking boring. Anyway, chanting has
never been part of NZ's sporting culture because we can't sing
and we're not clever enough to mix witty social observation with
sport. Even if we were, we'd be stopped by Red Badge for saying
naughty words or for being mean, and then there'd be letters of
indignation to the newspaper about "nasty men at the rugby saying
bad words around my child/wife/overseas guests". Mr Big, you can
have sterility or you can have atmosphere. The latter comes with
bad words. And by the way, you're a c*nt.
- Red Badge:
protecting ourselves from ourselves yet again. The crowd attempted
a Mexican Wave. I hate the Wave but at least someone was trying
something. A man threw a can in the air. Red Badge waded in with
threats of eviction. That's bullshit. If some kid cops one on
the melon, s/he can chalk it up as a war wound. There was a time
in NZ grounds when you could drink neat gin out of a hollow watermelon,
throw frozen chickens at enemy supporters, get in a fight, and
leave with an entire Caesar salad (with beer accoutrements) on
yer shirt and no-one'd bat an eyelid. Circa '99, one of harbourrugby.com's
international shareholders got thrown out of a one day international.
Three times. Now, one thrown empty can makes you some kind of
child sex offender. Harden the f*ck up.
- Joining
Hato and Westlake as quality ideas is the end-of-match pitch opening.
Granted, it reeks a bit of sanitising - the old days of mobbing
the players and fighting security guards were truly epic - but
at least they're not treating the players like the f*cking Queen
anymore. After the Shield victory a couple of years back, I went
into a toilet cubicle shortly after Junior Polu and I can assure
you that he shits just like the rest of us. To quote Kenny, "There
was a smell in there that would outlast religion". It's a great
chance for the wee 'uns to get up close and personal. Kudos to
the Union.
- Kudos, too,
to Jack McPhee: he clapped the vocal faithful after the pre-match
warm-up. Guys who acknowledge the fans are good blokes. A crate
of piss from MacDaddy to the first player this year who straddles
the fence and dives into the Hato and Westlake boys to receive
the adoration up close. 'Course, we'll have to f*cking win first.
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